Friday 5 Mar 2021

March 5: Mark 11:15-17
 
Key Verse: Mark 11:17
And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
 
Devotion:
What do you treat your local church building like? What does your local church group treat the building like? It is a loaded question because there are so many things we can do as a church group with the buildings we have and we should do as much as we can to support our communities through what we can do.
 
God wants us to do as much as we can, but He also wants us to listen to His instruction as to how we go about that work. We have a duty to uphold the name of Christ and part of the perception of Christ’s name comes from our local church buildings. This is not to say we should exclude anyone who does not follow Christ from our buildings – far from it.
 
God gives us so many things with which we should be encouraging people to know Christ, but some of those things can be used for our own purposes instead of Christ’s will. This is what the people in the temple courts were doing – they had turned over the area to those who were seeking their own profits and not anything to do with God. This is abusing what God gives us...
 
This goes much further than just church buildings and church grounds... God supplies us with the tools and the people we need to further the gospel message. We need to take care of everything He gives us and use them for the purposes He has charged us with. When we abuse this privilege and seek our own profit rather than Christ’s, we fall short of the charge God has given us and we then face His wrath or judgement alone!
 
Points to Ponder:
Have you thought about reaching out more with your church?
 
Will you support anything God asks of you?